Venezuelan High Court Suspends Referendum on President Chávez

By GINGER THOMPSON

Published: January 23, 2003

CARACAS, Venezuela, Jan. 22—
Venezuela's Supreme Court today suspended a referendum scheduled for Feb. 2 on President Hugo Chávez's rule, dealing a blow to the broad coalition of government opponents who had hoped that the vote, though nonbinding, might force him to resign.

Since the start of the year, the referendum has been a principal objective of many business people, union officials and politicians. To achieve it they have led a national strike, shutting most major businesses and crippling the state-owned oil company, the engine of the Venezuelan economy.

The strike is now in its eighth week, and today there was fresh evidence of the depth of the economic damage it has inflicted. Venezuela's central bank suspended its foreign exchange trading for a week in an effort to stop the free fall of country's currency, the Bolívar. Finance Minister Tobías Nóbrega said new foreign exchange policies, including ''restrictions'' on foreign trade, would be unveiled next week. Experts predict that the government may impose exchange controls to protect its depleted foreign reserves, caused partly by the dramatic decline in oil exports.

''The government must adopt urgent measures to prevent our international reserves from further deteriorating,'' Mr. Nóbrega said in a television address.

Yet leaders of the nation's chief business chambers and striking oil workers vowed to keep up their work stoppages to press the government to allow the Feb. 2 referendum. The opposition had collected some two million signatures to call the vote. The nonbinding measure would ask voters whether they believe President Chávez should resign.

The Supreme Court ordered the National Electoral Council to stop work on the referendum, to the joy of government supporters, who see it as an illegal ploy. ''It is nothing more than a fraudulent measure that is backfiring on the people who proposed it,'' said Juan Barreto, a legislator for President Chávez's party, the Fifth Republic Movement. ''And for that reason it has caused them frustration and rage.''

Mr. Chávez has publicly expressed opposition to the measure, saying that the constitution only allows for a recall referendum against his government in August, the midpoint in his six-year term. But opposition leaders said they saw the court decision today as proof that the government would block any formal accounting of public opinion.

Opposition leaders are scheduled to fly to Washington on Thursday to attend the first meeting of Venezuela's so-called ''Group of Friends'' -- the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Spain and Portugal.

The group will receive two proposals made here Tuesday by former President Jimmy Carter. The first was that the government and its opponents support a constitutional amendment to shorten the president's term and call for new elections. The alternative was that the two sides agree to support a recall referendum on Mr. Chávez's rule.